Thread: Gospel of Thomas: The Buddhist Jesus?

Before we get started, I'd like to set the tone with a poem by Richard Watts called

ONE SONG

"It seems to me that the world's religions are like siblings separated at birth. We've grown up in different neighborhoods, different households, with different songs and stories, traditions and customs. But now we've been reunited, and, having found each other after so many years apart, we look into each other's faces and can see the family resemblance. We're back together again, and it's very good."

In case you have never heard of the Gospel of Thomas, or are curious as to why it was
disqualified from the Christian Bible and eventually outlawed, you may enter with either open or closed mind...... it makes no difference which.

http://buddhistfaith.tripod.com/gospel/id9.html

The Exclusion of Thomas

Why was the Gospel of Thomas disqualified from the Christian Bible and eventually outlawed? During the reign of Emperor Constantine around the 4th century C.E., the Roman Empire was looking to reconstitute and solidify its power. The Emperor and the existing power structure chose the Pauline sect of Christianity as the “official” religion, which include the epistles of Paul and the Gospels and books from his disciples that form the present-day New Testament. Teachings from the Gospel of Thomas and other Nag Hammadi texts were seen as a danger to the developing ecclesiastical and political structure because they rejected the authority of the bishops, priests and deacons. Roman Church father Ignatius warned the Christians to "honor and obey the bishop as you would God." It is quite easy to see why the church councils did not choose the Gospel of Thomas and other similar texts for their Bible. As a result, for political reasons these texts were banned and later destroyed for the good of Empire and Church. After all, bishops and priests would lose their power and influence with the common people, if the common people learned that Jesus taught they did not need such religious authority/intermediaries of the Church, bishops and priests, and that the Kingdom is within all and is directly accessible to everyone without them; we all are sons/daughters of God.

Very nice post.

I would like to take this opportunity to give a personal view of Jesus Christ in terms which the modern man can understand. If God where to show himself in a form to you He could show you a billion, billion times a billion billion different faces, and every one of them would be Him. He is all expansive; He is every thing every man believes, and so much more. He is beyond all man’s combined intellect, and imaginations. So why do we get so offended, when others see a different face”which is His” I believe that God can be, and is all things to all men.

The Rev.